Exclude variants for specific markets

Shopify Plus

Topic summary

Goal: Sell the same product in different markets using different SKUs and optionally show different variants per market (e.g., Spain uses variant A with SKU 123; UK uses variant B with SKU 789).

Constraints: SKUs are used by a third‑party inventory app (backend only, not for display). The poster states Shopify does not support multiple SKUs per variant or assigning SKUs by market.

Tried workaround: Duplicating the product and modifying SKUs per market, then including/excluding per market. This conflicts with the inventory app because duplicate products may share SKUs, causing issues.

Proposed idea: Another participant asks whether the need is different variants or just different SKUs, inquires about product source, and suggests using native metafields (custom fields attached to products) as a potential approach.

Status: No concrete solution or decision yet. The poster seeks a native Shopify method (similar to per‑market pricing) or a third‑party app compatible with existing inventory management to manage per‑market SKUs and variant availability. Open questions remain on feasibility via metafields and integration behavior.

Summarized with AI on January 26. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hi!

I want to exclude some variants for specific markets and include some variants for specific market. The reason that I want to do it because I want to sell product with different SKUs in different markets.

For example:

We have Product1 with 3 different variants A, B, C.
The SKU of Product1 variant A is 456
In Spain market we want to sell Product1 variant A with SKU: 123
In UK market we want to sell Product1 variant B with SKU: 789

I have also some 3rd party apps that managing the stocks so I want to do it in a Shopify native way or some 3rd party apps that is compatible with other 3d party apps.

2

Hi how are you doing,

do you want to display different variants in your backend or do you want to display just different SKU numbers?

Also, can you tell me where the products are coming from?

I think we should use native metafields here, what do you think?

Kind regards,

Najam

3

Hi! I am fine thank you?

The SKUs are not for display they are for the backend which is connected with 3rd party app that is managing the inventory.

We have same products labelled with two different SKUs in one of market we want to link the product with one SKU, on the other market we want to link the product with the other SKU.

Currently Shopify doesn’t let us to put two SKUs for one product or variant and we can not separate SKUs per market.

We were thinking to duplicate the product, changing SKUs in its variants and include it only one market, exclude it from the other markets. With this option we have an issue with the 3rd party application that managing the inventory is having a problem products with same SKUs. So I was looking for a solution more native Shopify way to managing the SKUs like managing the prices in the markets section.

Thanks.